John Donne 
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“In head and shoulders, she was like a lion, / in back and tail, a snake, and in the middle, / a she-goat, and she breathed a dreadful blast / of blazing fire.” So did Homer describe the fearsome Chimera in The Iliad (as translated by scholar Emily Wilson in 2023). The Chimera terrorized the people of Lycia until slain by the hero Bellerophon, but the beast lived on in people’s imaginations, and English speakers adopted her name for any monster similarly composed of the parts of different animals. Later, chimera took on another meaning that is common in today’s lexicon: “an illusion of the mind, especially an unrealized dream.” This sense of chimera is often used to refer to a fantasy or delusion.
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Examples of chimera in a Sentence
Alison Willmore, Vulture, 12 July 2024
The chimera of another righteous military triumph cannot fix what ails the United States.
—Andrew J. Bacevich, Foreign Affairs, 28 Feb. 2023
Yet, the reality is starkly different: Such a formula is a chimera.
—Pankaj Vasani, Forbes, 9 Sep. 2024
The miraculous, revolutionary returns from AI are very likely to remain a chimera.
—Daron Acemoglu, Fortune, 6 Aug. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Chimera.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chimera. Accessed 30 Nov. 2024.
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chimera
noun
Medical Definition
chimera
noun
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